"Cuban newspaper Granma didn't reprint Barak Obama’s speech
in South Africa. It was a humiliation for Raul Castro. After the protocol
handshake, Obama explained that the name 'Nelson Mandela' should not be taken
in vain. ... In his speech, Raul inadvertently substantiated Obama's comments. Shamelessly,
Raul Castro celebrated diversity as if he were president of the Swiss Confederation."
Raul Castro looks up at President Obama as he finishes his tongue-lashing of the Cuban dictator, Zimbabwe despot Robert Mugabe, and others, saying, 'There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.'
Cuban
newspaper Granma didn't reprint Barak Obama’s speech in South Africa. It was a
humiliation for Raul Castro. After the protocol handshake, Obama explained that
the name "Nelson Mandela" should not be taken in vain.
It
was not acceptable to celebrate the era and life of the late leader, and to prosecute
people who hold to different ideas than those of the state. That is called
hypocrisy.
In
his speech, Raul inadvertently substantiated Obama's comments. Shamelessly,
Raul Castro celebrated diversity as if he were president of the Swiss Confederation.
As he spoke, the repression suffered by democrats in Cuba worsened with punches,
kicks and prison cells. The spectacle embodied the Platonic ideal of hypocrisy.
The
situation in Cuba is reasonably close to the former South Africa. There are many
similarities between the now-disbanded apartheid regime and the Castro
dictatorship in Cuba. The two systems were established based on ludicrous
theories that led to abuse and authoritarianism.
South
African apartheid was nurtured by the shameful North American tradition of
racial segregation, based on the sophistry of "two societies, separate but
equal." It was a model that originated with the supposed superiority of the
Whites, forged by vast amounts of "Jim Crow"
legislation. When in 1948, the National
Party of South Africa adopted this philosophy as its own and fragmented the
country into Bantustans, they laid the foundations for horror.
The
Cuban dictatorship, for its part, sustains itself with Marxist-Leninist
superstition. Communists in Cuba hold the exclusive privilege of organizing
life in Cuba. It even says so in the Constitution. They are protected by the “scientific”
certainty of superiority. There can be no other voices because they, through
the Party, are the vanguard of the proletariat - the class which is ordained
through the evolution of history to lead - for reasons unknown.
That
infamous South Africa, happily defunct, was essentially divided into two racial
castes: one part White that received all rights and privileges; and the other Black
and mixed race, who were second-class subjects (They weren't even citizens).
Cuba
is divided into two ideological castes: Communists and their “revolutionary”
sympathizers who have all the rights, and those who are indifferent or opposing,
who are described as worms or scum, and are abused and mistreated with the utmost
contempt. They are prohibited from even access to university study, since it
has been forcefully insisted upon that “college is for revolutionaries.”
Proponents
of racial segregation and apartheid South Africa legislated about people's
feelings. You could not love a person from another race. You could not have sex
with her. Interracial marriage was prohibited. Even kisses and caresses.
Proponents
of the Cuban dictatorship ruled that there could be no links of affection with
exiles, political prisoners, or regime opponents. The bonds between parents and
children, between siblings, and between friends, were broken. Sometimes couples
were split. Marriages with foreigners were frowned upon. The strange category
of “hostile [desafecto]”
was created. The secret police monitor the wives of communists, civilian servants
and military leaders, so as to notify husbands of any adultery. The revolution
also owns the crotches of its women.
Faced
with the horrors of apartheid, many countries began to press for a change of regime.
There was no choice. It was the only decent thing to do: end that foul hogwash
and peacefully substitute it for a pluralistic system based on consensus,
democracy, and equality before the law. To achieve this, an economic
embargo was imposed under the auspices of the United Nations.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
In
the face of this global harassment, the White government in Pretoria screamed bloody
murder, citing its laws and the peculiarities of its constitution. It claimed
to be exercising its sovereign right to self-determination, and was ignored. Beyond
this vile “nationalist” alibi was the issue of decency: the Black population
could not be mistreated with impunity as if it were composed of animals.
The
United States, which wavered in such cowardly fashion to join the international
embargo against South Africa (although in ultimately did), is in the case of
Cuba one of the few countries in the world that applies economic pressure with the
objective of exchanging a totalitarian and unjust regime for a pluralistic,
inclusive and democratic one.
This
is consistent. It is a contribution toward the liberation of the Cuban people,
as occurred on South Africa. I suppose, for Obama, that was the best way of honoring
Mandela.
